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Even though Wikipedia is very useful and can help us translators a lot to find background information and terminology (which needs to be checked!), it's not what call a reliable source. I don't consider myself an expert that is able to write articles for an encyclopedia. I'd rather leave that to real scholars.

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What annoys me is that there are vast differences between the content on a given subject in one language, say, English, and another language, such as Portuguese. I've often badgered my partner (Brazilian) into writing sections that are missing in the Portuguese version of pages.

Keep up the good work guys!!

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But I'd like to... The main problem is that usually some 'hot' varied topics are not so 'neutral' and seem to be far more than biased or single-sided, let alone completeness (e.g. missing pages, dead links, expired metalinks etc) and correctness. Also it really depends on the specific language, say a topic about something in English may be almost 10 times greater than the same topic in some other language. I wish they were more unified or something, but it might be beside the point

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Steven CapsutoUnited States Local time: 19:05Member (2004) Spanish to English + ...

A word or sentence here and there

Feb 28, 2011

I haven't written articles for them, but I've fixed factual errors and filled in important missing info on occasion.

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Even though Wikipedia is very useful and can help us translators a lot to find background information and terminology (which needs to be checked!), it's not what call a reliable source. I don't consider myself an expert that is able to write articles for an encyclopedia. I'd rather leave that to real scholars.

I don’t think that’s the problem with Wikipedia, especially when people (researchers IIRC) have pointed out that it only contains about the same amount of errors as traditional encyclopedias.

That said, I firmly believe that the current focus on “scholarly research” is antithetical to the whole idea of Wikipedia. They used to lead us to believe that you write what you know, so together we would create the best encyclopedia in the world. With the current emphasis on references, it means that local knowledge, oral traditions, and outmoded information will have a difficult time getting through the editors. IMHO the current politics strongly favours current Western knowledge and strongly discriminates against non-Western knowledge and even Western knowledge that has either become outmoded or never been widely discussed. So I do share the opinion that it may not be a reliable source, but not for the reason you cited.

I once spent almost a month correcting some factual errors in an article because it was almost impossible to find online articles or books that are still in print to back up my corrections. And that was for something that pertained to the West. I can’t imagine how anything pertaining to lesser-known cultures in Africa, Asia, etc. could stand a chance getting in under the current policies.

[Edited at 2011-03-01 04:30 GMT]

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When it first started, some friends of mine, experts in medieval studies, wrote an article on feudalism incorporating the latest research. It was corrected back 30 years.So, they fixed it, bringing it back to the latest research.It was corrected again, and they were belittled and insulted for believing that their expertise was of any value to the wikipedia community.

The professional historians pretty much washed their hands of the mess at that point. Because some of our knowledge IS more equal than others.

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